In terms of the communication distance, wireless network technologies currently available may be classified into a variety of wireless network standards such as WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network), WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Area Network), WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), Bluetooth, Infrared (IR) and so on. Among these wireless network standards, WLAN standards are used the most commonly in people's daily life, for example, in WLAN access points (APs) that obviates the need of wiring, WLAN wireless network cards used in personal computers and the like.
Comparing to a wired network, a wireless network is more convenient to be deployed and has greater mobility in usage, and meanwhile, use of a wireless network can dramatically reduce the cost of manpower and materials that are conventionally needed for the wired network. However, albeit of these advantages, the wireless network still has many limitations such as unstable data transmission ranges, poor data transmission safety, low data transmission speeds and so on. Furthermore, the wireless network transmits data between individual nodes through wireless channels which are very susceptible to influence from environment factors such as the shadow fading effect caused by shelters. Therefore, interruptions of data transmission can be caused between the individual nodes.
To prevent environmental conditions (e.g., shelters) from influencing data transmission between individual nodes in a wireless network, the conventional technology employs relay stations (RSs) to deal with this problem. More specifically, according to the conventional technology, RSs are disposed in advance between blocks of the wireless network that are susceptible to influence from environment factors so that data transmission between network nodes that cannot be connected with each other via wireless channel directly may be accomplished in a relaying manner.
However, common RSs are all disposed fixedly, hence, disposition positions of the RSs can fulfill the data relay functions shall be considered first before a wireless network is initially deployed. Besides, the number of RSs to be disposed in advance is in proportion to the cost. Furthermore, once the RSs are disposed fixedly, it is difficult to change the disposition positions thereof, which causes significant degradation in disposition flexibility of the wireless network. Moreover, the fixedly disposed RSs are still very susceptible to influence from external factors; for example, an oversize movable vehicle parked nearby an RS would obstruct relaying of data transmitted from the RS. Therefore, apart from the drawbacks of high disposition cost and low disposition flexibility, the fixedly disposed RSs adopted in the prior art are not necessarily able to overcome the aforesaid shadow fading effect assuredly.
Accordingly, a continuing need exists in the art to overcome the drawbacks of high disposition cost and low disposition flexibility of the fixedly disposed RSs in the prior art, thereby to improve the likelihood of successful data transmissions.